MISTOVER
Last updated: 2025-12-13
- Charming, strategic, and replayable combat system
- Unique *Darkest Dungeon* twist with doomsday clock
- Appealing art style and character designs
- Deep customizable difficulty settings
- Poorly balanced RNG mechanics frustrate players
- Repetitive gameplay with lacking QoL features
Emotions
The primary causes of frustration stem from the game's punishing and unfair mechanics, particularly in boss fights and combat systems. Players frequently cite 'first-try kills,' instant-death attacks, and excessive reliance on RNG as major pain points, which disrupt progression and undermine player effort. Additionally, repetitive grinding, poorly balanced difficulty spikes, and lack of meaningful content exacerbate the sense of tedium and unfairness, making the experience feel unrewarding despite significant time investment.
Disappointment arises from the game's failure to meet expectations set by its potential and marketing. Players highlight unfulfilled promises, such as missing features (e.g., Steam Workshop support), rushed or anticlimactic late-game content, and a lack of meaningful updates. The game's poor design choices, including unfair mechanics and lack of polish, further contribute to a sense of wasted potential, particularly when compared to similar titles like *Darkest Dungeon*. The absence of depth, innovation, and accessibility for casual players also amplifies this emotion.
Satisfaction is primarily derived from the game's strategic depth, rewarding mechanics, and the developers' commitment to improvements. Players appreciate the innovative combat system, meaningful counterplay options, and the sense of accomplishment from overcoming challenges. Updates addressing core issues, such as balance and playability, have significantly enhanced enjoyment, particularly for those who value fair difficulty curves and immersive experiences. The game's aesthetics, art style, and music also contribute positively to player satisfaction.
Excitement is driven by the game's unique blend of mechanics, engaging combat, and dark atmosphere. Players highlight the contrast between cute characters and a grim world, as well as the strategic depth inspired by titles like *Darkest Dungeon* and *Etrian Odyssey*. The potential for future updates, customization options, and the addictive gameplay loop further fuel enthusiasm, particularly among fans of the genre seeking fresh experiences.
Anger stems from the game's perceived intentional unfairness and poor design choices, such as the Doomsday Clock mechanic, permadeath, and deceptive boss fights. Players feel disrespected by punishing systems like save data deletion, lack of manual saving, and poorly explained mechanics. The absence of quality-of-life features (e.g., mouse support) and false promises (e.g., unfulfilled updates) further exacerbate frustration, leading to accusations of poor developer communication and disregard for player experience.
Verdict
Mostly negative
Summary
Positive 34% · Negative 66%. Score: 66 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game's enjoyable and charming core experience, highlighting its addictive gameplay loop, tense strategic elements, and rewarding progression. The game's mechanics and design are frequently compared favorably to titles like *Darkest Dungeon* and *Etrian Odyssey*.
- The game's anime-inspired art style, cute yet dark aesthetic, and well-designed characters are frequently highlighted as major strengths. The contrast between adorable characters and an apocalyptic setting adds to its unique appeal.
- The turn-based combat system is praised for its depth, counterplay options, and replayability. Features like the 3x3 formation system, combo attacks, and class synergies encourage diverse strategies and long-term engagement.
- The game is widely recognized for innovating on the *Darkest Dungeon* formula, particularly through its grid-based positioning system, faster gameplay pace, and unique mechanics like leader-switching and tile-based combat. This appeals strongly to fans of the genre.
- The game offers extensive difficulty customization, allowing players to adjust or disable mechanics like the Doomsday Clock, enemy spawn rates, and cooldowns. Updates have also improved balance, making the game more accessible without sacrificing challenge.
Negatives:
- Randomness heavily influences combat outcomes, equipment drops, and skill assignments. Players criticize the inconsistency of hit rates, evasion, and guard mechanics, as well as the reliance on luck for progression. This creates frustration and undermines strategic gameplay.
- The game suffers from repetitive dungeon crawling, battles, and grinding mechanics. Players highlight issues like enemy respawns without rewards, slow combat tempo, and lack of variety in enemy compositions or dungeon designs. This repetition leads to boredom and fatigue, particularly in mid-to-late game.
- The game lacks essential quality-of-life improvements, such as manual saving, mouse support, key rebinding, and fast-forward options for combat or cutscenes. These omissions make the game feel unpolished and cumbersome, particularly for PC players.
- Players express disappointment with the lack of meaningful updates, content expansions, or bug fixes post-launch. The game is perceived as abandonware, with updates focusing on minor optimizations rather than addressing core gameplay issues or adding new content.
- The in-game economy is poorly balanced, with high costs for resources, skills, and equipment. Gold acquisition is insufficient, and farming for desired items is tedious and often yields irrelevant rewards. This makes recovery from setbacks or progression difficult.
Gameplay:
- The game draws heavy inspiration from *Darkest Dungeon*, incorporating elements like dungeon crawling, permadeath, Lovecraftian themes, and a turn-based combat system. It also blends mechanics from *Etrian Odyssey* and *Mystery Dungeon*, such as tile-based exploration and anime-style aesthetics.
- The game features a unique 'Doomsday Clock' or 'Chaos Clock' mechanic that pressures players to complete dungeons efficiently. Failing to meet objectives (e.g., defeating all monsters, collecting all items) advances the clock, which can lead to save data deletion if it reaches zero. This mechanic adds tension and strategic depth to dungeon exploration.
- The game features a permadeath-like system where characters can die permanently, though replacements can be hired. Character and equipment loss is a core mechanic, and players must strategize to mitigate these risks. Some reviews suggest this can feel punishing, especially in roguelike modes.
- Characters learn random skills upon hiring, and skill upgrades are resource-intensive and randomized. Equipment upgrades are similarly unpredictable, requiring significant investment for minimal improvements. This adds replayability but may frustrate players seeking consistency.
- Combat is turn-based and takes place on a 3x3 grid, with characters positioned in lanes or columns. Combo attacks are limited to once per turn, and some abilities target rows or columns. This system encourages strategic positioning and team composition.
Performance:
- Multiple players report that certain weapons, abilities, or enemy types are overpowered or underpowered, leading to frustrating or trivial encounters. Some suggest reworking damage values or cooldown timings for better fairness.
- Players describe the narrative as shallow, predictable, or poorly paced, with underdeveloped characters and weak dialogue. Some mention that side quests feel repetitive and fail to add meaningful context to the main plot.
- Frequent complaints about frame rate drops, bugs, and crashes, particularly during intense combat or in specific areas of the game. Players on both PC and console platforms report these issues, suggesting optimization is needed.
- Players experience frequent disconnections, long matchmaking times, and lag in online modes. Some mention that these issues make cooperative or competitive play nearly unenjoyable.
- Feedback indicates that loot drops feel random and unrewarding, with too many duplicates or low-value items. Players suggest adding more meaningful progression or customization options tied to loot.
Recommendations:
- The game receives highly polarized recommendations, with some players loving it for its art style, strategic depth, and Darkest Dungeon-like mechanics, while others criticize its excessive difficulty, punishing mechanics, and lack of fulfillment. The feedback suggests the game appeals strongly to a niche audience but may frustrate or disappoint others.
- The game is strongly recommended for players who enjoy methodical, strategic, and punishing roguelike experiences, particularly fans of *Darkest Dungeon* and *Etrian Odyssey*. However, it is explicitly not recommended for casual players or those seeking a relaxed experience.
- Several reviewers question the game's value at full price, suggesting it is only worth purchasing on sale or after future updates. Some feel the game is incomplete or overly punishing for its cost, while others believe it justifies its price for the right audience.
Miscellaneous:
- Many players, despite initial hesitation due to negative reviews or high difficulty, found enjoyment in the game after investing significant time (e.g., 100+ hours). Updates have mitigated some of the earlier criticisms, and players appreciate the depth of mechanics, though they acknowledge the game's punishing nature. The modding community is seen as a potential source of future improvements.
- Multiple players express that the game would have benefited from an early access model, allowing for more iterative feedback and improvements before its final release. The current state of the game suggests it was released prematurely, leading to unaddressed issues.
- Some reviews mention distrust in feedback from specific player groups (e.g., Chinese players), suggesting potential bias or review-bombing. This point is included for transparency but is assigned low importance due to its speculative nature and lack of concrete evidence.
- The game was delisted from sale following a service termination announcement, leaving players unable to purchase it. This has also disrupted ongoing community efforts, such as guide creation, and may deter new players from experiencing the game.
- Recent updates (e.g., 1.0.3c) have addressed some issues, such as reducing resource consumption and freeing up inventory space for journals. However, persistent problems like skill reset mechanics, character loss recovery, and economic pressure continue to hinder player experience.
